Lyric soprano Jessica Yan describes the music that she’ll perform at the “East Meets West” concert on November 8 as a kind of cultural exchange.

The event with the Vancouver Metropolitan Orchestra at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts will benefit the Canadian Cancer Society’s Camp Goodtimes program.

“I just feel so happy, so content, to be living in this beautiful city and country,” Yan said at a news conference today (September 3).

“So I think my mission in the future is to do lots of charity and lots of education to the young kids, the next generation.”

The concert will include works by Puccini, Verdi, Dvorak and Handel, and will also incorporate Chinese classic and folk music from the nineteenth century and earlier.

Yan was born in Changchun, China during the Cultural Revolution. She studied music at the Beijing Central Conservatory of Music, and has also studied under Romanian soprano Ileana Cotrubas and professor Marshall Williamson of the Juilliard School in New York.

Ron Kuehl of the Canadian Cancer Society said the organization has operated Camp Goodtimes for almost 30 years for children with cancer and their families.

“What that camp is known for is providing children on the cancer journey with a summer camp experience, enabling kids who have to go through some very challenging days to simply be kids in the summer,” said Keuhl.

“It also has a side benefit for the families, because it provides in a sense for them an opportunity to have some respite care.”

Camp Goodtimes is located on Loon Lake in Maple Ridge

“I feel so honoured to have this opportunity to help those kids,” said Yan.

More information about the event is available at chancentre.com.